Tyson Foods Shifts Antibiotic Policy, "No Antibiotics Ever" Label to Be Altered

Tyson Foods Inc., a leading global meat processor, has announced it will remove the "No Antibiotics Ever" label from select chicken products, reintroducing antibiotics not significant to human treatment. This policy shift has raised eyebrows, given the growing concern about antibiotic resistance fueled by food production practices.

Tyson Foods ditched the drug for infections eight years ago, and since then, the “no antibiotics ever” has been emblazoned on its chicken products’ label packaging. Then again, only some of the chicken items are set to lose the mentioned phrase on the label.

According to CNN Business, the Springdale, Arkansas-based food processing company will start using antibiotics in its chicken production and said that this is the type that is not important to the treatment of humans. In any case, the use of antibiotics in food production or processing has been heavily scrutinized in recent years because some bacteria have become resistant to medicines and treatment due to repeated exposure to antibiotics.

“At Tyson Foods, we base our decisions on sound science and an evolving understanding of the best practices impacting our customers, consumers, and the animals in our care,” the spokesperson of Tyson Foods said in a statement.

The company said that some of its chicken would start deleting the “no antibiotics important to human medicine” on the label by the end of this year. Tyson Foods ascertained it would only apply antibiotics that are up to the standard and recognized by the USDA and the World Health Organization (WHO).

It was in 2015 when the company announced its decision to eliminate the antibiotics in its chicken wings, breast, and chicken nuggets. At the time, the company said it was working to get rid of the drug as it was worried about the increase in antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections in humans. It added that it would like to play its part in helping reduce the human consumption of antibiotics.

Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal was the first to report on Tyson Foods’ decision to resume its use of non-medically important antibiotics in some of its chicken production. “Based on current science, Tyson brand products are transitioning to No Antibiotics Important to Human Medicine (NAIHM), which is expected to be complete by the end of the calendar year,” the company’s representative stated.

Photo by: Tyson/Unsplash